The Bridge

Berlin, 2000.

 

It's not so much what's there as what isn't:

the strip of forest where the trees have not yet grown,

the concrete bridge connecting roads which have

vanished under leaves.

 

The absence runs on, stopping at nothing,

cutting through roads and rivers, pavements and houses;

we glimpse it as a cobbled suture,

a seam between the world as it was

and the city as it is;

 

it's a faultline through Potsdamer Platz

where the buildings have pushed down roots

faster than trees, binding old rifts with

steel threads and sky-high glass.

 

At dusk, the bridge is an apparition in the woods.

A sound like the skitting of dry leaves becomes

a shaken spray can. The bridge

is the only thing that's left to paint,

but the lone boy has no slogans, nothing more to say,

except to make his sign for himself

over and over again.